You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby

"Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?"
--George Bernard Shaw

I just watched about 15 minutes of a show on E! (the heights of culture, I know) about plastic surgery. I know these shows are on all over the place and all the time, but they freak me out too much to really pay them any attention. I saw two things on this program before I switched channels: a woman getting cheek implants, and a woman injecting collagen into the balls of her feet. Seems it provides a soft cushion, all the better to withstand hours of Jimmy Choo shoes. Yikes!

I have met people over the years who are too intimidated by Los Angeles to actually move here. Many people simply hate LA for the same reasons these people won't move here: too many "beautiful" people. Too much plastic surgery, implants, extensions, whatever. People who have to have a personal trainer and work out however many hours a day in order to look good - because that is their job. Or perhaps, that is the job they want.

And it's true. There are a lot of beautiful people here. People with glamorous hair and perfect skin and flat stomachs and great tans and pearly white teeth. But there are a lot of "regular" people here too. Los Angeles has a population of about 4 million, and although it seems like one out of three of those people has some sort of creative aspiration, that doesn't mean they are also intimidatingly beautiful. And those who are intimidatingly beautiful aren't necessarily the most interesting to talk to.

(I once ran into a horrifyingly gorgeous woman on the elevator in my building, and she was picking at a granola bar and hitting the 3rd floor button repeatedly. I told her that she needed a special card key to trigger that floor, and the receptionist at the front desk could help her out. She looked at me and said, "Oh. But I was just up there a second ago! It should still work..." She kept hitting the button. I know this is a bit of a stereotype, the dumb beauty, but I see it way too often in this town.)

I spoke with a woman once who was visiting from New York City, who said that she couldn't live here because she would never be able to handle the dating scene. She felt that there was too much competition, that the men are more conditioned to "perfect" women. Well, maybe that's true in certain circles, but those don't have to be the circles she moved in.

Anyway, you get used to it. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? I see beautiful people every day. Maybe not movie star/ model beautiful, but definitely beautiful in their own right. You never know who is looking at you, when you don't think you're all that, and thinking, "Damn. What a beauty." And then for those with "beauty," it is difficult to keep.

"Show me a beautiful woman, and I'll show you a man sick of fucking her." -- Frank Sinatra

(Not as sweetly said as Mr. Shaw, but you get the drift.)