Jul 01 2009
Social Currency
“A girl with good looks is like a guy with money.”
So sayeth my mom.
“Beauty is like social currency, the more you have, and the more popular you are.”
My mom was quite the hottie in her day. She’s still pretty cute but when she was younger?
Dang.
My mom is like most attractive women – she feels her worth it tied to her looks: the prettier you are, the more you are worth.
Beauty fades.
My mom is struggling with aging.
But it’s more than the aches and pains that she struggles with, it’s her feeling that she’s no longer attractive.
Aging ain’t pretty: the body slows down, the skin sags, and parts start to break down.
When beauty is your currency, you’re going to run out of cash.
Mom feels poor and there’s nothing I can do to make her feel rich.
She thrusts out her arms, showing me the back of her hands. Her hands are slender and traced with pale green veins, the fingers slightly bent from arthritis.
“Look at this! All dried up!” she tells me.
“I’m no longer juicy, ” she says, pointing to the delicate bones in her hand.
“Young folks are juicy. When you’re young you’re a grape. When you’re old, you’re a raisin.”
According to mom, it’s better to be juicy; life is good as a grape.
My mom is creative and funny and observant and oddly wise.
She drives me nuts and I love her.
Beauty comes at a cost and yet we all want to pay the price.
I admit – it’s easier to be rich than it is to be poor.
At 44, I’m not as juicy as I used to be.
I don’t want to be poor and I struggle with my loss of social currency.
But I also realize it’s only money.
If beauty if only skin deep, then loving yourself seems the better investment.
Loving yourself goes down to the soul.
What better way to be rich?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I was going through this with a friend of mine. Struggling with a bad break out that just would not go away, resorted to staying in the home instead of going out. My friend felt as if they were not good enough to be seen. Being good looking had its drawbacks when the looks were riddled with unsightly marks. I had to tell my friend you may want to reevaluate and put your value into something more substantial.
I should forward this post. I think it would be something worth reading.
I have always tended to look more like a raisin than a grape so I learned early to not bank on that currency. I feel for your mom – because she can not do anything about it. I agree with you – love yourself for who you are, not what you look like. I think that makes you all the more beautiful…
UT: Unfortunately, there is truth to what my mom says – society values beauty. People are usually nicer to attractive people. It takes a good sense of self-worth to not be bothered or affected by society’s focus on looks. I’ve seen enough tabloid headlines to know that we are not kind to those whose beauty has faded.
I knew as a teenager that I wasn’t going to be a grape forever! I knew that aging gracefully (accepting who I am and the changes that happen) was the way to go. As Beth commented, loving yourself makes you all the more beautiful!
Beth: Hahaha! I’m laughing because I don’t think of you as particularly raisiny. Maybe that’s another way to look at things, “We’re juicy on the inside.” I’ve seen “average” looking people who were attractive mainly because they were confident and seemed very okay with who they were. There is something to be said for not having to worry about your looks! Saves a lot of emotional energy.
Your mom was a hottie? Send pictures!
But seriously, there is truth to what she says. Unfortunately, I have no money so I guess I’m doomed.
However I was in NYC recently and I thing ( I stress think) that many women with handbags worth ore than my car were checking me out which was a bit shocking to me. I thought my fly was opened.
Ricardo: Yeah, mom was a hottie. So was her mom, my Granny. Mom likes to say how this hotness runs down “the maternal line” and has urged me to “Use The Force” so to speak.
Men with money are more “popular” – that is how it works – but that doesn’t mean you’re doomed! Of course women with check you out, you’re worth checking out! Fly or no open fly! hahaha!
I don’t think I would have been as sensitive to aging if I hadn’t suddenly, late in life, discovered the benefit of grapeness. It was really only at the verge of raisin-y-ness. And I do think it will be a hard decent into raisinness, but I think it must be a lot harder for people who were once drop dead gorgeous. At least the gap for me won’t be as large.
Then again, I remember one time I was in a restaurant with my parents and my aunt and uncle. My aunt was in her late 60s or maybe even 70 at the time. Some guy was noticing her, even flirting with her a little maybe. My dad says, “The men still love her.” and my uncle responds, “And she still eats it up.” Or it might have been the other way around. Either way, maybe not as much of it is age based as we think.
Judge Judy once said that ‘beauty is passing but dumb is forever’. Make sure you got something left to talk about once your looks go!
Due to my Celtic skin colouring I am less of a raisin and more of a limp grape. You know like the ones that get left in the fridge too long?
Jill: “f I hadn’t suddenly, late in life, discovered the benefit of grapeness.”
What? Cliffhanger? No story?? Is this your story or something you noticed? I can’t imagine you’d have a “hard descent” with your attitude.
There is some truth to: “Youth is wasted on the young” (G. Bernard Shaw) – you have to have some life experience to appreciate being young. Of course, this just make me think about being a kid and hearing the “old folks” complain and give out forecasts about how lucky I was to be young. Now I know enough to appreciate what I have now. I also catch myself telling all those 20-somethings to “enjoy it while you can.” when they do something to excess and manage to spring back quickly.
Grapeness is relative – if you’re a juicy 68 year old then you’re going to want someone as juicy. When you get older, if you’re juicy and male, it seems you have your pick of the ladies in your age range (and older) as the women tend to outlive the men. But juicy elderly men tend to want juicy women so they go for younger, leaving the raisiny women who are closer in age in the uh, dust.
Then again, maybe juicy is not just physical, it’s mental!
arizaphale: “dumb is forever” is true! Wise people see past the looks and when it comes to romantic relationships, sure you have to have some physical attraction but over time, the mental attraction keeps the emotional attractions going!
Oh, no story really. It’s just that I was definitely raised not to take advantage of or make a big deal of looks. It wasn’t until probably a couple of years ago (just after divorce) that I realized it was ok to take advantage of looks to a certain extent. For instance, I never fully realized that boobs were useful above and beyond baby feeding until after I got divorced. Sad, but true.
In a way you sort of saw me through some of that transition, or maybe I only wrote you about it later but I remember writing to you often about the men I dated between divorce and shacking up with Razor. I think that having a marriage already behind me and already having kids allowed me to see dating as something to do for fun and not necessarily anything serious, which in turn meant that I didn’t have to be so serious about downplaying the role of looks in relationships. Or something like that. Which all turns out to be very ironic if you consider that I was only looking to have fun and ended up in the best relationship of my entire life. Wait…what we talking about? Oh yeah – boobs. Use them while you’re young.
Ok, I realized while I was out rollerblading that it’s like this – I just recently posted about how two guys made various remarks to me while I was taking a photo by the side of the road. Before (perhaps because of a combination of the way I was raised combined with 12 years of marriage to the wrong person) I would never have recognized that as having been hit on, and had I thought about it at all, it probably would have been in a derogatory way. Post-divorce though, I can just simply enjoy it for what it was worth – two guys pointing out a curiosity in their neighborhood in a flattering way, IF you allow yourself to be flattered.
The other thing I realized while I was out rollerblading is that I have absolutely NO IDEA how rollerblading fits in with your mom’s whole drying up theory. I would think you’d have to get fatter to plump out and that seems sort of counterproductive.