Earlier this summer, an old high school friend and her husband, whom I hadn’t seen for 40 years, stopped by on their way from northern Indiana to their home in Atlanta. I was a bridesmaid in their wedding 49 years ago.
During our visit, my friend shared a picture of me at 20, in a light-blue gown, proceeding into their wedding ceremony at our hometown’s United Methodist Church. A lightning strike could not have affected me more than seeing that old picture.
Growing up, I always compared myself to others
I met my friend and her younger sister while we worked at the local drive-in, a staple of 1970s Indiana. As carhops, we wore silver coin changers and placed yellow metal trays filled with burgers and glass mugs of root beer on customers’ front car windows. Both girls were fit, pretty, blonde cheerleaders.
I had been slightly overweight since my early teens, and working at the drive-in with its free ice cream didn’t help. My jet-black hair didn’t seem to match my pale ivory skin, which burned in the sun after just a few minutes of exposure. And I was sensitive about my nose, the dreaded “McVay” nose, the famous proboscis of my dad’s family.
I didn’t measure up to what I saw on the pages of “Seventeen” magazine, the arbiter of all things good. My dear mother, God rest her soul, was six inches shorter than I, and a size six. Like most of her friends, she wore only foundation, a hint of rouge, and bright-red lipstick. She dressed like Jackie Kennedy.
And with no sisters, I had no clue about mascara, the trendy blue eyeshadow, or any fashion sense. My hair was very black and thick, and full of waves and five cowlicks. Mom took me to the woman who did her weekly Wash-n-Set for perms with varying results. I often looked like a brunette Mamie Eisenhower. Before plus sizes, I was relegated to the awfulness of Alfred Dunner and other women’s clothing, making me look like an older woman.
I made friends and met my wonderful husband, but still felt unattractive
In college, I found people who shared my interests on the college yearbook staff, and we are still friends. I married one of the editors, a handsome man with eyes bluer than Sinatra’s. We’ve been married for 42 years, and we have a son, smart and good-looking like his father.
Yet this feeling of unattractiveness stayed with me most of my life. Even on my wedding day, I was intimidated by my bridesmaids’ looks, even in a hideous-then-fashionable peach taffeta dress with “Seinfeld’s” puffy sleeves. White was not a good color for me, and I didn’t have the agency in 1984 to strike out and do something different.
Twenty years ago, when my father digitized 500 Ektachrome slides covering the sixties and early seventies, I saw that I was indeed a cute little kid. That was progress.
Now I’m 69, and I have the requisite facial wrinkles my peers shared, but like Nora Ephron said in a book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” After hiding from the sun after my beach baby oil days as a teen, my wrinkles aren’t horrible. But my neck resembles Mr. Gobbler as he struts during his reprieve at the White House every Thanksgiving.
But I’ve been blessed with white hair, like both my grandmothers and my mother. I quit coloring my hair when I retired from full-time work nine years ago, and I love my hair. I feel like I earned this color.
That picture made me think about how I look at myself
After a lifetime of struggling, my self-loathing has given way to an appreciation for a long, good life filled with love and many friends, rather than missing the Junior Prom.
When my high school friend visited, I saw the picture for the first time in many years. And I was floored.
Who is this young woman? She’s very pretty. She isn’t smiling, but she looks nice, even lovely, in the 1970s-style dress and hat.
How I wish I could shake away all the bad feelings she had about herself and tell her, and every other young woman who feels as I did, that life is more than how you look in high school, where the harshest judgments come from people who may look similar. Almost everyone has something like the “McVay nose” in their family, and not everyone can be a magazine cover. Real beauty comes from the inside; it took me decades and a vintage snapshot to appreciate this truth.
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