Anyway, one of our major assignments for the year was to pick a female person from history and learn her-story. (Get it? history-herstory?) We were to spend the entire term learning about this person and then writing a huge paper about them.
My person was Eleanor Roosevelt. Typical choice you might think and maybe it was, but at the time I knew nothing about her. I read many books about her- including the excellent biography by Blanche Wiesen Cook, herself a feminist. I found myself becoming entranced with a woman who had lived nearly 40 years before me. What struck me about Mrs. Roosevelt is that even though she was considered a great woman, even in her time, she still had those frailties and insecurities that we all harbor deep in our hearts. The woman help draft the United Nations charter on Human Rights for pete's sake-you'd think, that at the end of her life,the following wish wouldn't be a part of her make up;
"Is there one thing you would change about your life, if you could?"
"Yes. I think I would like to be prettier."
That quote still amazes me. That after everything she had done- for the country, for the poor, for the world- her only wish would be to be prettier. I never used to understand that. It seemed unbelievable to me at the age of 20 that a woman who had accomplished so much would simply want to be 'prettier'.
Now at the age of almost 32, I think I can understand it a little bit better. Maybe Eleanor understood the stupidity that is world- the world that puts superficial above substance. The world that is, no matter how much we try to change it, still run mostly by men. A world where women with breasts the size of watermelons and Iq's the size of peas are still considered a great, sexy thing. A world in which little girls at the age of 7 are starving themselves to be thinner. Maybe she understood that you can say anything and at least be part way understood just because you say it with a more attractive face.
Maybe she got all these things- maybe she knew that if she had been prettier she would have accomplished even more...
Sometimes, when it's dark and I lay in bed, alone and lonely I think I truly know what she meant. Sometimes I'd even like to trade some of my intelligence, some of my talent, my cleverness, my whatever it is that makes me me (and therefore makes me stand apart)just so I could be prettier too.
Knowing how irrational and vain that is does not make that thought go away.
It only makes it louder and more persistent.
And that, no matter who you are or what you look like, is truly a shame.