Remember!

To look at me you'd never guess I was so obsessed with female beauty of the type celebrated in the pages of W, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, InStyle, et al. I don't aspire to it, but I appreciate it. Looking at beautiful people is one of my favorite pastimes. (Also, looking at average and ugly people – basically, I'll watch anyone. Sometimes I think the pleasure I take in this is at least partly responsible for my wish to be invisible – because then I could stare at anyone I want to stare at, without freaking them out. But I guess that's what mirrored sunglasses are for.)

The down side to looking at all these images is that when I then look at myself in the mirror – or even worse, at pictures taken by other people – I'm usually dismayed at my utter ordinariness. This is interesting because most of the time, I actually do find myself pretty damn fabulous. I don't expect anyone else to see me that way, especially lately, what with the extra poundage and haircare gone awry and new little wrinkles appearing with alarming regularity ... But what can I say, I like myself quite a lot most of the time and it doesn't bother me (much) if others think of me as boring. Because ... you know ... I know I'm not.

There is much more to say on the topic of self-image and the desire to be admired vs. the desire to be invisible – but all I really wanted to say today is that I was just flipping through the March InStyle and misread something that made me smile.

On the little bookmark thingie they have glued into the binding, one of the headlines (under BEAUTY) is "Forgetting You're Gorgeous."

At least that was what I thought it said. I spent a very pleasant half-second or so ruminating on this ... "Yeah! I am gorgeous! Thanks for the reminder, InStyle!" ... before I read it again and realized it actually said, "Your Plan for Getting Gorgeous." It was the way the words broke at the end of each line that led to my mistake. In reality, InStyle thinks that I am not yet gorgeous. What they're selling is their plan for helping me GET gorgeous.

Anyway. I just wanted to write that down. As usual, I prefer my own interpretation. I'm going to stick with that and so should you.

Forgetting you're gorgeous?
Don't forget! You're gorgeous!