I was in the banking industry for most of my 38-year career, but banking was never my expertise nor my passion. What I, and most of the female members of my family, excelled in was the art of critical observation of other people’s looks. It started when my sisters and I were kids.
While our friends were practicing the piano, guitar, drawing and gymnastics, we were practicing insult bombs. And, we got really good at it. It was never sufficient to toss out a lame “you’re ugly,” or “you’re stupid,” or “Mom & Dad hate you.” Those were o.k., but, let’s face it, they were tired and worn. We aimed for that single element of truth found beneath all sobering insults. “Your face looks just like a cardboard box.” Or, stretching our creative juices, “You look like an anteater from the back of your head.” And, directed towards me, “You look like Mr. Magoo on a really bad day.”
Most often, the attacks were met with equally brutal retaliations. “Oh yea? Well, at least I don’t have a pizza pimple face filled with pock marks!” Or “Oh yea? Well at least I (always began with ‘Oh yea, Well at least I’), don’t chew my toenails like a monkey!” (Like it would be o.k. to chew them like a human being…?)
There was certainly nothing ambiguous about our verbal punches. We knew the buttons to push and the soft-bellies to target. “Do something about your big toe – it looks like a bald man trying to escape foot jail.” “Did you know your face gets all weird and scrunchy when you laugh?” Not content with plain old verbal slams, we supported our accusations with animated mockery. To imitate the scrunch, we would crease our cheeks and force-fit dimples where none previously existed. “See? This is how you look. Nah nah nah nah nah.” The effect was powerful enough to make the accused never laugh again.
We would proudly extend sleek & slender toes and compare them to the sister sporting the hideous bald-man ones. “This is the way toes should look.” Oh, the shame and horror of having bald-man toes. We had taken the hippocratic oath, and put our own special spin on it “First, do harm.”
What we didn’t appreciate at the time was that poetic justice would soon kick in. The face that “looked like a cardboard box” was actually the early development of my sister’s strong, model jaw-line that the rest of us would come to envy. Or that the “anteater-from-the-back-of-the-head” resemblance was borne out of a beautiful, thick braid of hair that cascaded down my sister’s back. To this day, her hair remains thick and lustrous and never grew as thin and gray as our’s did. (The Mr. Magoo crack, on the other hand, stemming from my ultra-thick eyeglasses, was just plain mean and never really redeemed itself.)
As we grew into teenagers, we expanded our critiques to the rest of the world. No one escaped our ruthless observations. We didn’t see just a female student at school; we saw a girl who may have had beautiful auburn hair, but who really needed to do something about her makeup. We argued that her eye shadow was too blue or not blue enough, her nose was too big, her teeth too crooked, or that none of it mattered if she would only stand up straight instead of slouching like a squirrel hunting for nuts.
This is what we talked about. We were honing skills for careers in industries that hadn’t yet been invented, like the Inhumanities or Social Dis-Services.
Then, out of the blue, we grew up. We matured. And, Voila - we became kind. Our harsh words were now tempered with consideration for each other’s feelings. (We had feelings?! Who knew?!)
But, something was lost. Maturity breeds caution and caution is not always what the doctor orders.
One day, as I studied myself in the mirror, I thought “Your skin is too bland, your eyes too bugged, your jaw-line too weak, and that mile-long space between your nose & upper lip has to be surgically corrected. Face it, kid, you’re hideous.” My sisters were right all along – I DID look like Mr. Magoo, when he had a fever of 105 degrees.
So, I asked friends and family if any of this was true and, of course, the answer from all was a resounding “NO!” In fact, according to them - this mealy-mouthed, backboneless bunch of matured namby-pambies - I was fine just the way I was. Not even my trusted partners-in-abuse - my sisters - would confirm any of it. C’mon…some of it HAD to be true!
It occurred to me that we were all being too adult about this criticism thing. Too sensitive to each other’s feelings. Too invested. Too cautious. How can people get the truth about their looks in a world where adults - adults who had been so perfectly trained in honest ridicule since childhood - now fall victim to the paralyzed, politically correct?
It was then that I decided to create My Looks Online.com. I wanted a platform where frankness is not crippled by kindness. Where people can get truthful, honest answers to their sincere questions about their looks. The website does not invite rudeness (in fact, will remove it when found), nor insults. But, it does provide the opportunity for someone to ask, for example, if the outfit he or she chose for a class reunion is appropriate. I wanted my sisters, and the rest of the world, to be able to anonymously respond with “Please reconsider – that outfit is [fill in the blank] for a class reunion.” Or alternatively, “You look amazing. Knock ‘em dead!” Whatever the truth, as they saw it, might be.
The site should be up and running soon. In the meantime, I miss the “one-ups” that my sisters and I mastered when we were younger. However, being the mature adult I am today, I admit that I would have preferred a likening to Mr. Magoo on a really good day!
