Monologue - Beauty

Woman:
Many people have called me beautiful. I know they're lying though - I've seen beautiful women, and I'm not one of them. I don't mean magazine models, or the women who sprawl over the bonnets of BMWs; I mean really beautiful women. They're like music. They are not simply beautiful on the exterior; a symphony may look beautiful on the page - those little flecks of sound intermixed with Italian italics and curling around jagged symbols, but when played it could sound like a rather large mammal giving birth to a cactus. No, women who slink and slip, who laugh and lie, and make everyone around them take notice.
'You have such amazing eyes.' The number of times I've heard those words! When you say the word 'hello' over and over again it loses all meaning, when you stare at the word 'world' for too long it becomes merely letters with no meaning. And so when you hear a compliment one too many times it all becomes part of a routine.
'Thank-you' I reply unfalteringly, carefully lowering my eyes as if to deny them the privilege of another glance. Quite a clever tactic that - I really only do it because the idea of looking at them any longer - knowing they're examining and analysing my eyes. . . Many cultures believe the eyes are the doorway to the soul. I feel frightened, invaded, trapped.
Isn't it ironic? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but look into your beholder's eye and you will see you own reflection.
Have you ever done it? Stripped of everything; shirt, skirt, tights, socks, shoes, vest, bra, knickers, hair band, clips, jewellery, make-up and pretence and just stared at your own body in the mirror? If you're a man, minus the bra. . . I hope, but you get the idea. It's an interesting exercise. Despite seeing parts of your own body naked all the time, just looking at your whole self, and only yourself feels almost wrong. I've always wondered, do lesbians get aroused at the sight of their own body? It seems irrelevant but I imagine the answer would be no. Simply for the same reason that the sight of my brother bounding around the house in nothing more than a giant England flag billowing behind him as he yells 'Two world wars and a world cup!' at the top of his lungs used to make me feel positively ill, if not thoroughly entertained. So it's hard, to just see yourself.
I imagine everyone sees the world a little differently from everyone else, but for a few it is more acute. You're one of them if you can make things grow and shrink in your vision, if you see words move across a page when they are stationary, is as a small child you did see your dolls move. I once heard a man talk of how he used to stare at the wood grain on the ceiling above his head and was convinced it moved. Occasionally I hear a distant but very real-sounding tune jingling away and think it's someone's mobile going off. When I realise I am lying in bed I become very scared, but also curious about why my mind is so strange. I like to think of it as 'over-active creativity' rather than something which will have me hauled to the nearest mental health facility in a straight-jacket while my family huddle on the pavement shaking their heads and saying
'We all knew this day had to come. . .'
I'm rambling, of course. I tend to do that. But how can I not, when given the opportunity to vent my every thought? If you backtrack over a thought pattern, you realise it's not a pattern at all, more like a dot-to- dot puzzle done in the wrong order. You can get from sushi to Socrates in six thoughts, I've discovered. So from beauty I've reached my mental imbalance, though I suppose they're quite closely connected. After all, what is it that drives many to anorexia? Why is it that I spend almost an hour each morning on my appearance? Keeping up appearances is not such an old idea after all. Appearances define every facet of our existence. When we apply for a job we are judged on our appearance, when we arrive at a party we are judged on our appearance; let's face it, if we are being judged, we are being judged on our appearance. But it does bother me, when I lean to my friends and say,
'That bloke over there's quite tasty.' And am greeted with a barrage of 'Oh my God! You're so shallow' and 'Do you ever think about anything apart from looks?' What do they expect? Should I say of the gentleman on the other side of the room,
'Wow, what a wonderful personality he has' Of course not. Why are babies cute? Even the ugliest little bliters are still adorable. It's to appeal to their parents. Not a happy situation for a dog to give birth, only to discover the thing it has just produced resembles some kind of large reptile. It would be likely that said dog would abandon said ugly lump of flesh to the bitter wilderness, assuming of course that said dog is living in some kind of wilderness. . . otherwise I've just trampled all over my own theory.
The truth is that beauty is an unavoidable part of our lives, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Beauty exists in everyone. And sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping for a triumphant finale about 'inner beauty' (what you want to take a look at my long intestine and decide how nice you think that is), I'm speaking about physical beauty. Even the apparently ugliest parts of us possess some form of beauty, depending on how they are viewed. Have you even glanced what looked like dog shit on the road and groaned inwardly, only to realise it was a rather beautiful crumpled leaf? That's beauty, if we choose for it to be. And if all else fails, follow the wise words of Miss Piggy, expending on an earlier point of mine:
'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.'