does she know how beautiful she is?
by pamela caswell and lily hiott-millis

As Lily’s stepmother-in-training, I was struck by the beauty and insight of this commentary (see below) she wrote after a walkabout downtown.

This short piece of writing shows the depth, subtlety and plain old artistry that a young teenaged girl can possess. One of the many things I felt reading this piece was relief. It is a sign that Lily could be breaking out of socially prescribed molds that have a lot of kids, including Lily, acting superficially and cynically.

There is a popular persona among a significant swath of the middle school set (and even among some high schoolers and beyond), that involves speaking in a kind of ditzy way about superficial things, as in “oh, my god, (affected giggle), he’s like, so hot...” etc. Our culture’s neurotic obsession with the appearances of things, and especially people’s (and especially women’s), bodies and faces is so pervasive that even if you don’t watch television, as we don’t in our house, a girl’s self-worth inevitably gets hijacked by endless comparisons of how well she matches up with our culture’s standards for how she is supposed to look. The relentless stream of images we are exposed to of young, airbrushed faces and bodies, typically posed in some kind of sexually suggestive way, creates an unavoidable standard, a standard that insists on our unquestioning allegiance, yet is often impossible to meet.

What I see as even more insidious are the subtle underlying messages. Most of us can discern that a narrow ideal of beauty is a mere mirage; in the blink of an eye, aging and death, the great equalizers, settle the score. In the meantime, too heavy a focus on appearance has us engaged in a classic bargain with the devil, our soul lives sacrificed for… what?

Lily flirted some with self-deprecating remarks about her looks this past year (even though she happens to be beautiful within the culture’s definition as well as in her own unique ways). She flirted with saying things like, “I hate myself. I’m ugly.” She would send these missives out to friends and even strangers via Internet forums, waiting for a ping, wondering what truth would be reflected back to her. As a family, we would talk about these issues explicitly. What are we really doing when we say “I am ugly"? What is it, really, that beauty consists of? What is it in other people, really, that inspires us, that makes us feel our own wholeness, sense of well-being and beauty?

Our culture compulsively glorifies the appearance of youth, specific physical attributes and a sexually suggestive style at the expense of honoring aging, wisdom, inner depth, richness, spirituality and diverse body types. Many young women understand the power they hold during that relatively brief phase during which they most mirror the culture’s narrow definition of beauty and sexuality. What I am afraid they might not understand so well is how fleeting this period is, and how a reliance on power derived from appearance and attitude is like reliance on the strength and durability of a castle built on sand. The tide of aging will roll in, probably rather sooner than you expected it, and if there is no rich inner life to animate the ripening body, what is left but an empty shell? With no inner compass, a woman may have to begin the proccess of real self-discovery relatively late in life, rather than spending that time diving into the ever deeper waters of experience and joy that come with real self-knowledge.

How natural and beautiful it is for a young girl to spend a lot of time in front of the mirror, brushing her hair, gazing into her own eyes, being endlessly fascinated by how she is seen by her peers, beginning to see the beautiful female form blossoming from her prepubescent body. Yet, how tragic if her culture robs her of a richer self-definition that will both make her beauty deeper and more subtle, and sustain her during times when her appearance does not and cannnot fulfill her or make her feel secure or whole.

Likewise, how natural and beautiful for an older woman to delight in the depth, subtlety and complex passion of her love and sensuality, yet how tragic if her culture robs her of confidence in her body’s riper beauty and causes her to question the validity of her longing to open and surrender to life through the medium she has: her unique form.

I’m amazed that this phenomenon is not even more crippling than it seems to be. In order to access the locus of what is solid and permanent within us, women, young and old alike, swim upstream to resist the overly sexualized, overly superficial iconography that permeates our environment. If we want to steer a course in life that is consonsant with our own actual inner longings, we must be willing to cut ourselves off from part of our world and community. If we want to age and die having learned to sing the songs of constellations, having remembered who and what we are ultimately, we must trust our own wisdom and create genuinely supportive subcommunities in which we can be authentically nurtured and offer our unique gifts.

Talking explicitly about how culture affects us is really valuable, but ultimately, a young girl has to notice the seed of self-knowledge inside herself, pick it up, tap on it, take an interest it, begin to take care of it. The turning away from popular culture this requires feels lonely and scary, which is perhaps part of the reason that socially immersed kids are reluctant to do it. Searching for what has heart and real meaning does not seem popular; I don’t think girls feel supported doing it, especially not by their peers. 

When I read Lily’s piece, which is unedited, I felt that she may be beginning to find her courage, her willingness to take her own side. I find this so moving and inspiring. It seems like a fragile, yet pivotal step in the unfolding consciousness of a young woman in a world that, ironically, seduces with its heartlessness.

Pamela Caswell

Have you all really deserted me?

I went downtown today. Alone. First I went and sat in front of the Vance monument and watched tourists do disgusting things with that brass pig. Then I just started walking around.

I love Asheville. It’s the most gorgeous place, with the most wonderful people. I have to leave sometime. I know. But I want to take everything with me, from the feeling of the molding on the Grove Arcade rubbing against my shirtsleeve, to the white-haired woman kissing the college boy tenderly on the mouth. From the amazingly gay man screeching at someone across the street to the woman with foot-high hair in a salon.

Really, I noticed this woman, any age from thirty to forty, the wind blowing her hair to the side, leaning against a building and reading a paperback. All I could think when I saw her was “Does this woman know how beautiful she is?”

I walked around a little more, and I think I cried a little bit, but I’m not sure. When a preppy, pink-and-green-wearing girl grinned at me, I realized something, and I got scared.

When I came up to a dark window, I took a deep breath and looked at my reflection: my hair, tangled and frizzy from the wind, my skin, red from the cold, and my eyes, clouded with worry. I tried to look deeper, but I didn’t know how. And there was one question on my mind: Does this girl know how beautiful she is?
As I started back to my house, a nearly toothless, old black man wearing a Panthers sweatshirt told me to keep warm because we were going to have a cold night. I smiled the rest of the way home.

I love you

Lily Hiott-Millis