Beauty As Opposed to my Beast
When my alarm went off this morning I grabbed my phone (which is what I use for an alarm) and hit snooze. I kept hitting snooze for about an hour because I was deciding whether or not it was worth it (to me) to get up and actually go to work. To many this wouldnt be an issue, but I wake up tired, go to bed tired, and live my life in a state of fatigue. Going to bed, last night, I was so tired I was actually amazed that I made it home from dinner with the parents and some of my siblings. It happens. I seem to live my life tired.
At some point I found myself standing, naked, in the shower with the hot water running over my body. While standing there I was wondering how I got into the shower and why I was awake. Moreover, I was thinking about how I got to this point in my life where work mattered enough that I was forcing myself to get out of bed and actually go. There was a time, it seems not so long ago, when I wouldve just rolled over and gone back to sleep. Granted, Ive done that once or twice since landing back in Utah and at this job, but I have only done it around periods where I am already sick. I dont, necessarily, feel sick at present.
Since I was running late, this morning, I drove up to 100th south where TRAX either starts or ends (you decide) and waited for the train to show up. As I was standing there, a woman walked up in a light blue parka, the light blue was kind of a funky color, and I didnt stare, or really spend a lot of time checked her out, but as I thought about it I realized that I didnt really know whether it was a man or a woman. My preconceived ideas about people dictate that the look and character of the person suggests woman, but as I thought about it I realized that even though she was tall and was wearing a parka that suggested a woman (the hood was up and cinched tight) I couldnt really tell what gender the individual was.
Moreover, I started to think about that blue parka and even sat down to write some ideas on the train. As I got on I dont know what happened to the blue parka, but the ideas started to trickle and the outcome was that I was sitting there thinking about a tall, lithe, possibly pneumatic woman and I have no real idea whether or not the woman I was looking at was even a woman let alone an attractive one. She looked cold, the parka looked warm and the air was definitely cold; however I didnt feel it was cold enough to justify the measures she was going through.
As I sat there writing some of the ideas that were coming it occurred to me that the person couldve been a man. Yes, I have an idea of how women move and what they look like, legs, arms, mannerisms, etc., and yet, I dont know whether or not the person was male or female. Moreover, I have no evidence, other than what my observations, to suggest that it was anything other than a woman.
Men can wear the same clothes as women. Women can wear mens clothes and in the end there is a serious ambiguity about what factors are definitely male and definitely female. Take skirts for example. A skirt is something that goes around the body. Therefore a lot of things can be considered kilts. Traditionally, the Scottish wear kilts. Kilts are, by definition, a skirt and men have been wearing them for hundreds of years (at least) and possible more than one millennia.
Further ambiguities are prevalent when you consider the thousands of body types and the variations in how people look or act and it is possible that many men (and women) can take on characteristics of the opposite sex. Some men may be better toned and better developed than some women. Long hair is not longer the realm of the woman and it is possible, given the ambiguity of body type, to mistake, from the wrong angle, a man for a woman. It goes without saying that my filters make me want to see a woman, but thats not always the case.
To juxtapose this with the woman that sat down next to me about ten minutes later, while on the train, all I could see was her body in profile. I wasnt overtly checking her out, but I was trying to picture what she looked like when her face became present. From the angle that I had she was a relatively attractive woman who was sitting next to me and waiting for her stop. Her stop was, apparently, farther along than mine, but still, for about twenty minutes I wondered if her overall appearance was attractive or if her face would detract from what appeared to be a relatively attractive body.
Admittedly, those same filters that saw a woman in a blue parka without evidence imagined a blonde haired blue eyed beauty sitting next to me. And yet, at my stop, when I got up, I glanced down at the girl sitting next to me and noticed that her eyes were bloodshot and brown and her appearance old and haggard. She certainly isnt as old as me (there are other indicators for this) but life and time had been much harder on her appearance than on mine or many other people. The beautyI saw, in my mind, was not the person sitting next to me.
How often do we allow our filters to dictate what it is we are really seeing? The blue parka, the blonde sitting next to me, neither was in a position where I could see what they really looked like and I assumed, because I wanted to, that they were exactly what I wanted them to be. They were attractive, they were both female, and they were great... until my notions of what was sitting next to me was brought into stark relief and I realized that sometimes the very notions that carry us from one day to the next, from one job to the next, and from one relationship to the next are often flawed.
I, like so many others, have this weird notion that I will wake up one day next to a very attractive woman. I want to marry someone who is attractive in my eyes. Thats important because I think a lot of people are building justifications in their minds to satisfy the societal norms created by the media and other elements. Think about it. We are taught that little girls need to grow up to be thin and beautiful and little boys need to be... well, I dont really know. I never followed what little boys were supposed to be. At least, I never really paid attention to it outside of the notion of providing for a family; and even that has become a non-entity in relationships as more and more women are looking for, and finding, jobs while having families. Honestly, I will never stand in the way of a career but I hope that I can provide sufficiently well for a family where my wife may choose not to work. This, of course, suggests that I actually begin dating again, meet someone special, and get married. It doesnt feel like its going to happen.
But that is still the point. I am shallow. I like beautiful people and especially beautiful women. In my mind I wake up next to a physically beautiful woman that meets a lot of other criteria; and at the same time I realize that some of my preconceived notions are not realistic and that there is an equilibrium point where the level of attractiveness and the level of intelligence come together. The extremely attractive and the extremely intelligent do not seem to go hand in hand because the one neglects education and the other neglects appearance.
How shallow am I?