Beauty of youth lost on the young
AS I’VE aged my perception of beauty has changed.
As a teenager in the 1980s, beauty was confidence and being on trend.
A girl a few years older than me named Patricia Burns was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
She had a cockiness to her that was endearing.
I doubt she knew I existed, but I knew all about her.
She wore tartan leggings, an oversized collared shirt buttoned up and secured with a diamante broach.
I went to an all girls school until my final year. We mixed with boys during discos at the local civic centre and Scout Hall.
Patricia had long hair with blonde highlights that splayed upwards and defied gravity.
My hair was in a shorter bob style but I hair-sprayed it until my head looked like a taxi cab with its doors open.
I spent my final year of schooling at a co-ed school because my parents finally listened when I said girls were mean.
The nastiness and cruelty delivered by ‘innocent pretty little things’ made my four years with just girls, hell.
I was called ‘lama’ because I was tall and teased relentlessly because I have freckles.
“You were standing in front of the fan when the sh&t hit it.”
Nowadays girls paint freckles onto their faces using make up.
There are countless tutorials and some have freckles permanently tattooed.
Seriously? Where was that when I was a teen?
What’s attractive is what’s on trend.
It’s really simple.
Make up and clothing, the way you talk and carry yourself, on trend accessories and being up to date with popular culture … that’s it on rinse and repeat.
Hair is dyed, coloured contact lenses worn and bodies are shaped through the latest exercise trend.
Gym wear comes into the fray with fitness companies fighting for a slice of a lucrative market.
People tut-tut at shoppers who wear active wear but it happened in the 1980s and 1990s, too.
None of us knew how we appeared to older folk.
They’d say things like ‘you must be beating the boys off with a stick’.
Um, no.
They saw us through a lens that filtered out trends and popular culture.
We were just us, as we were.
I get it now though, I see it.
There are beautiful young girls everywhere considered unattractive by their peers.
Why? Well, because they don’t fit current popular culture ideals.
I looked at old high school photographs the other day and realised some of the students I thought unattractive were actually good looking.
I saw myself as a teenager and thought the same.
When you’re over 50, beauty is youth but we realise it far too late for it to make a difference.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth … oh never mind, you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they both have faded.
