The Beautiful and the Damned

It is truly dumbfounding how beauty can both a blessing and a curse. Beauty has no loyalty and no compassion. Beauty is fleeting, and for those who have possessed a great deal of beauty in their lifetime, as she starts to fade and abandon you for another, youth, you feel betrayed and forgotten.There is nothing more grotesque than a person grasping for something they've lost, and replacing it with some artificial form of what they had formerly. That is the truly tragic part. Sometimes I feel that it would have been better to not have known her at all.

“The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”- Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

The first time I felt beautiful I was twenty-two years old. It was a brilliant moment, as I had always considered myself the ugly duckling (all five of my siblings were born with platinum-straw blonde hair and had clear azure or vivid green eyes; who wouldn't be intimidated?). That being said, I have always believed that my greatest strength is my heart and my mind. As girlchildren of eleven, living in Eastern Europe, my best friend, Snow White, and I were victims of unspeakable abuse by the older boys in our town. I tried to save her so many times, and I would fight for both of us. I sharpened my nails into points so that I could draw blood, if the occasion called for it. To this day, Snow White is the pariah of the town; chained, cruelly and unfairly, to her past and can't even walk through the center without being a target of lewd gestures, whispers, and stares. This is why, when I receive partial treatment (which has been nearly equal parts pleasure and cruelty) because of my beauty, the irony is not lost on me. The world is a very cruel place, and while I definitely feel the pleasure that beauty brings, I realize how much the other side stings...beauty is a double-edged sword in many respects. This is why I will always adore beauty and glamour, however, I will be forever faithful to my imagination, my writing, and my heart. I will always be a sunny philosopher, a lover-poet, an exotic fetishist, a charismatic seductress, a faded nymphet, and Lolita's best friend. Beauty does not, and will never, define me. 

Comrade Von Pussycat