Isn't It Ironic, Don'tcha Think?

The curvature of our lives is funny, isn’t it?

Like most people, I was an acne-riddled, ugly-glasses wearing teen with unruly hair and a limited rotation of ill-fitting clothing. I remember when I was 16, I was at a retreat for Jewish teens, and we were sitting around in a circle on some Saturday night, singing the service that ends Shabbat. All us nervous, hormone-addled teens in one place! And there started a “kissing chain” around the circle--on the cheek, modest-style. The boy sitting next to me had to kiss me two times as the chain came around twice, and I remember hearing him “whisper” to his friend that he tried to kiss a spot that didn’t have a zit on it, but he couldn’t find one.

Kids are mean, sure. But, there is a thick stripe of “Ugly Duckling” syndrome down the center of my story.

Once, in middle school, in a stroke of self-esteem beyond that of usual, I answered a modeling casting call at Nordstrom. My mom supported me and came with me, and I just filed behind some other girls in a line in front of some auditors, hoping, Kate Moss-like, that someone would pluck me out of my angsty teen life and whisk me away to something fabulous and without blemish. (You can assume that didn’t happen.)

What happened instead is I got to live the angsty life I was handed, and nearly 20 years after that cattle-call, be asked to do it again.

I still haven’t sent in those photos to the real-people modeling agents. But, (maybe) I’m closer. The only time I was ever approached to be a model was when I’d shaved my head when I was 21 and was wandering around Manhattan looking for a savior. A man approached and said he was an agent for bald models, and his business card did actually have a bald model on it. (Instead I went to the asylum, but I digress.)

This Christmas, while busking in Union square, I was approached by another modeling agent, and I followed up with a call, and was told to submit my photos. To send them by print. There’s so much resistance to this! Is it the Ugly Duckling saying they’re only conning you? The girl with the acne no one will look past? Or just the ennui and hopelessness of a woman engaged in a professional life that saps her energy and enthusiasm?

In whatever case, and whatever resistance, it’s not up to me, is it?

I had a mentor once tell me, G-d will either fulfill your desires, or take them away. I sort of believe that. The urges and wishes and ideals and fantasies that we have; either they’ll morph into something else; they’ll fade; or they’ll be met. How many of us desperately wanted that X Y or Z, and having not gotten it, later exclaim, jeez, I can’t believe I really wanted that!

What I’ve really been thinking about though, is the irony of having become someone people consider beautiful, which has necessitated the desire to be seen for more than my beauty. I find it a cosmic raspberry that after so many years of being the awkward, painfully shy, unseen thing, I now want people to stop seeing me for my exterior alone.

I think your soul is sexy, he wrote me.

Followed surely by a nice bought of sexting. But, Still.

What a curvature of life, eh? To become the beauty you always wanted to be, but then want people to look past it? It’s odd; I dunno, I don’t have a more well-thought out way to put it.

But, I also know that part of what makes my soul sexy is that I do things that scare me, like submit photos to agencies. I do things that I don’t feel worthy of, and hope the self-worth follows by the esteem of doing them. Right actions lead to right thinking, and all that.

I would like to list this check-box on my list of life participations; just for the fact of trying. Like the acting; just for the act of trying. I hear the screaming teen inside me saying This is WEIRD, but that’s okay. I can drag my feet and do it anyway.