GIRL

Is there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the girl who came to stay?
She's the kind of girl you want so much
It makes you sorry
Still you don't regret a single day.
Ah girl!

I was thinking about the girls who came to stay in my head, those from my childhood, the girls I wanted to be like. I guess I never really thought consciously about being like my mom, although she was nothing but sweet and funny and loving and kind as I was growing up. I guess I was looking more for something of my own time, something youthful and exciting, very similar to how I attached to The Beatles, et al. I was really too young to know what cool was -- I just know what I was pulled towards, like a magnet. And that just happened to be WAY WAY COOL. Hee hee.

How I wanted to be a MOD!! How beautiful those girls were, I thought, with their shiny long long hair, and BIG black rimmed eyes, and pale lips, skinny-limbed and colt-gawky. I wanted a long blonde flip, a Mondrian-print dress, white go-go boots, and fishnet tights. I still do, in my heart, oh I still do. I spent hours with fashion and music magazines, LIFE and LOOK as well, soaking it all in. I was a fabulous teenager in my mind, wearing Mary Quant and Rudy Gernreich and Biba. I couldn't WAIT to be old enough to buy some Yardley white lipstick and giant false eyelashes and pout my way down the street. Of course, by the time I was a teenager, fashion SUCKED SO BAD that it hurt my heart. Everything was long and plaid and ugly as holy hell. I just didn't know when I was little that things changed, until they did.

I think the first girl I thought was just so beautiful was the British model Jean Shrimpton, soon followed by Marianne Faithfull (she had MY name! swoon!), Dusty Springfield, Twiggy, all the go-go girls on Hullaballoo and Shindig and Where The Action Is, Elizabeth Montgomery, Julie Newmar, Jane Asher, Edie Sedgwick, Julie Christie, Tina Louise and Dawn Wells...so many. I wanted so much to be beautiful, like they were. It took a long long long time to get over the fact that that was not going to be the case, so ingrained they were on my mind, how much I thought their beauty was the only beauty worth having.

I think it wasn't until two things happened, that I got OK with me as me: seeing my beautiful icons change into a more realistic kind of lovely over the years, and having someone else think that I was beautiful. Sometimes you can see yourself through someone else's eyes, instead of the relentlessly cruel bathroom mirror. Sometimes, you can see what they see, even if it is just for a second. Who is not made more beautiful through love?

I will leave you with a video of the teenaged Marianne Faithfull, before things changed for her as well.