you are beautiful, but you dont mean a thing to me

3 months. Sorry.

I’m not going to say “I’m back!” because honestly? I have no idea. I can’t tell you the last time I sat down and wrote something that would even be appropriate for this diary. My life is interesting only to me, and no one here can share my love for the masterpiece that was Snakes on a Plane (yay!). However, in the interest of entertaining the 3 people who probably even still have me on their flist, here’s a half-finished entries that I never got around to posting!

I honestly couldn’t tell you the context in which this was written. I’d probably been hanging out with my sister and she had mentioned me getting hit on at a bar? Maybe we’d gone to a bar? I don’t remember, although it must have been a similar situation.

I suppose that could be true (though I never noticed this). I am buxom, redheaded, and exceptionally ditzy. Isn’t that what every man wants in a girl? However, I don’t often get approached at bars or parties. They say that men are intimidated by attractive girls, and so they don’t get as much attention because it is assumed that they will laugh at any attempt by the average man to interest them. My mother, my sisters, my friends would always use this excuse. The only problem is, men don’t usually approach the ugly ones either. Then again, if I flip this around and applies it to a situation where I am getting hit on, does this mean I am someone’s secondary choice? Between the blonde at the bar (she’s too beautiful, she’d laugh in my face) and the brunette on the dance floor (i doubt she’d ever go for a guy like me) and the other girls in the bar (too pretty, too many friends, not enough friends, too fat, too thin, ugly, beautiful), do they look at me and say, “She’ll do?”

You can never know, short of asking each boy who hits on your average-looking friend instead of you and every boy who chats you up in a bar. I imagine these approaches might seem a desperate plea for compliments and attention rather than an attempt to know oneself.

What’s interesting is the disjointedness between how we see ourselves and how we are seen by others. The anorexic who sees only fat in the mirror, while we implore her to eat something and add flesh to her skeletal frame. The ugly-duckling-turned-swan, with conflicting self-images, one plain, one beautiful layered and blended like a double-exposed photograph. The writers who crumple page after page of genius, sure that the writing will not carry to the reader.

I once tried to write two pieces, one called Mirror and one called Photograph to try and illustrate the difference between internal and external objectives. Writing the “mirror” first, it was simply a regurgitation of all the things wrong with me, things I’d often lamented in my journals or to friends. It was harsh, and I teared up several times while writing it. Upon a reread, months later, it seemed melodramatic. A plea for pity, for validation. The “photograph” was harder. To record the things that I though on “good” days and the compliments I’ve received (e.g. praising the ‘fro for it’s originality rather than the unattractiveness of a bush of red hair) was awkward. I think my parents, in an attempt to keep me from ego, gave me an intense dislike of self-pride. With each nice thing I wrote about myself, I felt an urge to include a disclaimer after everything. Later rereads we similarly uncomfortable; listing all the things others had said, that I thought and never admitted, made me search for a wooden surface to knock upon. I deleted that part of the file so that no one would ever know that I had thought good things about myself.

We are always in a state of self-improvement. Dieting, reading fashion magazines to pick up some new styles, changing hair and makeup, adopting the adorable phrase the cute girl at work always uses. We aim to be liked and wanted by everyone, because otherwise, we are worth nothing. Without constant reinforcement, we disappear.

Anyone who knows me has heard about my great love for Natalie Portman. I think she’s the most adorable person ever, and I imagine that, with her looks and personality, life would be close to perfect. Then, of course, I hear about people who hate her stupid laugh and her boyish body and the things she says and I think maybe I wouldn’t be so happy being her after all. It wouldn’t be worth it if I wasn’t universally popular. But if you’re holding out for universal popularity, you’ll never find it.

We could never hope to make everyone happy. Why, then, do we try?