I Am Beautiful: A Celebration of Women in Their Own Words

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portfoI ioI AM BEAUTIFULForget the ways popular culture defines women's beauty.Instead, take note of these portraits of women-at every age and stage of life—and be reminded where true beauty liesDANAChicago, IllinoisTry as I might, I am not able to say anythingabout beauty that is more meaningfulto me than the few lines I wrotenearly three decades ago as a twentyyear-oldArmy nurse in Vietnam:Like swans on still water they skimover the warAo dais gliding, rustling serenelygleaming black hair pulled primlyawayfrom faces that reveal nothing saveinner repose,a beauty so deep even war can't defile.I note my reflection in their obsidian eyesan outsized barbarian, ungainly, unkempt,baggy in ever-wilted greens,five-pound boots taking plowhand strides,face perpetually ruddy, dripping in alien heat.In their delicate presence I exhume teen-age failuresthe girl in the back row forever unnoticed,the one no one ever invited to dance,the one never voted most-likely anything,the one who was never quite something enough.But once in a while, on a crazy-shift morning,when I've worked through the night and I'm too tiredto care,a young man who reeks of rice paddies lies waitingfor someone to heal the new hole in his life.He says through his pain, all adolescent bravado,"Hey, what's your name? Let's get married.I love you."And just for a moment I become Nefertitiand for all the Orient's pearls and silksI would not trade the glamour and privilegeof these honored hands, licensed to touch one filthy GI.Excerpted with permission from / Am Beautiful: A Celebration of Women in Their Own Words edited by Dana Carpenter and Woody Winfree, published by Rose CommunicationsBridgeport, CT (Hardcover, $27.50.) Available from your local women's bookstore or directly from the publisher, (800) 784-5244.O N T H E I S S U E S • S p r i n g 1 9 9 7
MARGUERITE, Cambridge, MassachusettsThe remarkable resemblance between the Minoanpriestess's distinct profile and my own strikes medeeply. It is a great, magical affirmation of my beauty,strength and connection to our ancient feminineheritage. It makes me think I must have had pastlives as a priestess in which I stood proud, confident,empowered. It affirms the importance of myspiritual path in this lifetime to assist humanity inembracing and reintegrating the feminine oncemore. It helps me heal from the sadness I've feltover not measuring up to the image of buttonnosed,blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty so prized byour culture. It reassures me that my rich, exoticlooks make me glorious, too.S p r i n g 1 9 9 7 • O N T H E I S S U E S 25
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