Pretty

“Well, aren’t you handsome?”

My smile froze on my confused face.  Had she just called me handsome?  I wasn’t sure how to react.  Was I handsome?

I’d never really thought of myself that way.  But maybe I was.  She’d meant it as a compliment, looking me up and down, taking in my motorcycle boots, the Levis I’d stolen from my Dad, and my double-breasted sport coat, all with a wry smile.  I was delighted to receive a compliment from Dorothy Allison, this phenomenal, emblematic, lesbian writer.  It just wasn’t the compliment I’d expected.

I think I managed a simple “thank you” before I asked her to sign the picture of us from 6 months earlier at an activist training, her arms wrapped around me, inside the same blazer I was now wearing.  Standing there, an eager 20-year old lesbian activist, I watched our generations run smack into each other, and then embrace as fully as we had embraced in the picture.

When I picked her up the next morning to take her to an intimate gathering, she used the word again, and complimented my boots.  Then she asked me if I was into leather.

As we drove in my Ford Escape wagon, with my little rainbow sticker boldly placed on my bumper, I realized that this woman was challenging me.  Whether she was meaning to or not, she was challenging the labels I’d chosen for myself.  And I left the experience, transformed.

***

Baby, honey, babe, hon, sweetie, beautiful.    I once had a girlfriend who hated pet names.  “Use my name, damn it!” she’d said to me early, early in the relationship.  And so I did.  She wanted to identify as herself, and not as anything else.  It was a first for me.  Being called, “baby” didn’t bother me, but I was happy to accommodate.

I’m sure I called her beautiful, but not in the pet name way.  She was beautiful.  Sometimes people ask me what it’s like for two women to date.  I don’t have anything to compare it to, but it is two women.  So, along with two pre-menstrual weeks to navigate, and two sets of emotions sitting right under the surface, there can also be two people aware of the body issues, and insecurities that most women face.

I’ve had every woman I’ve dated ask me, “you know you’re pretty/beautiful/attractive, right?”  The question, it seems, comes from this hyper-awareness that the person we’re looking at might have the same feelings of inadequacy, the same self-doubt that we’ve experienced, ourselves.  That by telling the other woman they’re beautiful, we empower each other, starting a conversation and demonstrating a shared experience and language.  The answer, for me, depends on where I’m at in my life.  But it’s not really the answer that matters.  I find myself asking the same question.  Or making an assertion.  The words I choose are different, depending on the person.  And I find it really interesting the reactions that come.  For instance, the word, “gorgeous” is one that not every woman has heard from a partner.  I’ve dated gorgeous women who melt at the word, because it’s something they’ve never experienced.  I think that’s incredibly sad.

And I want to say here, that this isn’t some game, some entertainment, to see what words will manipulate women most effectively.  Not at all.  I wouldn’t tell a woman they were beautiful if I didn’t think they were.    And I’ve never felt manipulated by these words of affirmation.  What I find most interesting is how I’ve seen women respond when I use a complimentary word to describe them – one that I identify with them – when they don’t identify with it themselves.

For example:  there was a video that popped up on one of my friends’ facebook pages.  It was simply entitled, “Pretty.”  Have a look.  See what you think.

I found it incredibly powerful.  I think I even got teary.  And then I thought about my use of the word.  I reposted the video with the following lead-in:

Wow.  Such a simpole word loaded with so much for so many of us.  Who hasn’t wanted to be pretty, to be seen as pretty, or called pretty?  Who hasn’t handed out the word as a compliment, whether thoughtless, or thoughtful?  Here is what I know:  I am more than a pretty face.  So are you.  We are beautiful, and complex, and complete.”

The conversation that came out in the comments was really fascinating to me.  Most women who responded – especially the lesbians, were ready to push the word away.

Pretty isn’t a word I’ve used a lot, but it’s one that has a really specific meaning to me.  Like obscenity, I know it when I see it.  And I’d seen it in the face of a woman I had dated.  In little moments when she was most herself, I’d look over and see her essence and think, “she’s so pretty.”  It happened one night watching tv.  She’d let go, simply being, without thinking about how to be, or to look, or to act.  When I told her she was pretty, and stroked the side of her face, she gave me a totally baffled look, physically pulling away.

She shook her head and looked at me like I was crazy, muttering something like, “nah.”  Then she gently put her head on my chest and said quietly, “I don’t think anybody’s ever called me pretty.”  It wasn’t a lamentation.  Simply a statement.  I realized that she was probably feeling the way I had the first time someone called me, “handsome.”  It didn’t immediately fit.  It wasn’t the way we’d seen ourselves, as handsome or pretty, and strange to hear it assigned to us from the mouth of another woman.

I think that, for many of us who have lived outside the realm of conventional beauty, whether it’s because we have short hair, or muscular builds, or dress androgynously, or simply because we love women, we’ve abandoned the words that go with that conventional sense of beauty.  We’ve found new language, new words that we can claim as our own.  For some of us, that’s “handsome”.  For others it’s “butchy” or “femmy,” or even the general “hot”.

After a few hours of intense consideration, here’s where I came out at the end of the facebook conversation:

I realized that when I see a woman as pretty, it’s not when she’s dressed up, or when she’s looking at me, trying to project something into the world. It’s in the precious, fleeting moments when she forgets to put on a show. When she is looking away, simply existing. The soft, unprotected essence is simply pretty. And that’s something quite different from the intense beauty that comes from passion, or deep strength.

What’s tough is that I want to tell all of the beautiful, wonderful women in my life that they are pretty. They are! Our words have been so co-opted and twisted. Haven’t we all wanted to be pretty? Don’t we all want to know that we are beautiful? Not at the cost of all else. Not at the expense of being our incredible, authentic selves. But simply by the grace of allowing ourselves to radiate out the true essence of who we are? I was never pretty when I wore mascara. Earrings don’t make me beautiful. I do. More than words like, “queer” and “fag,” I want to take back words like “pretty” and “beautiful.”