"Can I tell you something?" He asked her. They were standing in the corner of a room filled with drunk college students who were drinking, talking, and dancing to the loud music blaring from the speakers. "You are the prettiest girl at this party." The statement surprised her. She was wearing baggy jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt, and she wasn't wearing makeup. Other girls wearing short skirts and tight jeans, halter tops and tube tops. They were the one's drawing stares, being hit on, having guys grind up against them on the dance floor, and reveling in the attention.
He moved closer so she could clearly hear his low voice over the loud music. "You are the prettiest girl here. And you know it. And you desperately don't want to be." She couldn't think of what to say to that, so she just let him keep on speaking. "You want to be anything but pretty. You don't want to be stared at, and drooled over, and consumed by hungry eyes who devour your skin, and your legs, and your tits. You go to great lengths to avoid being thought of as a pretty girl. Right now, you would rather be nothing than be pretty." He paused as he let his words sink in. "Am I close?"
She stared, stunned, at this stranger who was so easily dissecting her. He was more than close; he was spot-on. She had always been pretty. From a very young age her straight blonde hair and bright blue eyes had drawn compliments wherever she went. But she did not feel like it was any sort of accomplishment. When the other kids in school were complimented on being smart, it was because they had answered a math problem or used a big word. On the playground, other kids were lauded for their speed, and their ability to catch a ball and jump high. Those were all things that they had done, specific things for which they were receiving praise. But she didn't do anything. She just was. She was pretty without having to work at it at all, and it was the beauty with which she was born that received the compliments, not anything that she had cultivated or worked towards.
"Here's the problem though," he continued. "Right now, you are nothing. You are trying so hard to create something new, to replace the pretty with something else, anything else. But there's nothing there. You're not a smart person, or a funny person, or an interesting person. I've been talking to you for half an hour and you haven't said anything remotely smart or funny or interesting, because you don't have any of that inside of you. You're nice, but nice is meaningless, and useless. Nice is what people fall back on when they have nothing else to offer. The best thing that could be said for you is that you are pliant. Since you have nothing on the inside you are completely willing to be whatever anyone wants you to be. Anyone who really wanted to could fill you with whatever they chose, and you would be willing to accept it, if for no other reason than because there is a void inside of you that needs to be filled. Nature abhors a vacuum."
She thought she should have been offended, but she wasn't. She was some combination of stunned and confused, and she couldn't figure out why. The things that he was saying were supposed to sound wrong. They were the opposite of everything she had spent the last year telling herself. Those were the things she had believed in high school. By her sophomore year she was 5'8" and her breasts did not seem like were ever going to stop growing. Every boy began to stare at her, constantly, memorizing her curves and probably imagining her naked. It was not just that everybody saw her as "pretty," it was that nobody saw her as anything but pretty. Or beautiful, or gorgeous, or hot. Those adjectives were, to everyone around her, the sum of her personhood. Nobody expected her to be smart, or interesting, or funny. Nobody expected her to read or follow politics or care about the world. Nobody even really expected her to speak. They just expected her to be, and to be pretty.
College stood in the horizon as an opportunity for a fresh start, and she hoped that she would be able to redefine herself, or rather, to define herself at all, to exist beyond her beauty. She got her hair cut short in a style that was, while not unflattering, certainly not as eye-grabbing as the long straight locks she had always had. She bought a whole new wardrobe, lots of pants and long-sleeve shirts, everything baggy, nothing revealing, nothing that drew attention to her legs, her stomach, or her D-cup breasts. She stopped wearing makeup to class. She worked hard to make sure people saw her, as Eric had just said, as anything but just pretty.
And yet here was this stranger who not only saw through her disguise, but who understood its purpose, and who was telling her that it wasn't working. Everything that he said made sense. All she had ever known was being pretty. Maybe it was too late for her to change. Maybe all of her efforts to downplay her beauty had done nothing but rob her of an identity. She had been trying to fill herself in for the last year. Had it all been for nothing? If this stranger she had just met half an hour ago could see through her so easily, had all that work been a waste of time?
"Do you know what I think you should do?" He asked. She tried to open her mouth to speak but she knew that no words would come out, so she only nodded. He stared into her eyes, and said quietly, "Give up."
