No. I can’t imagine loving a physical characteristic. You mean like you used to not like your nose and learned to love it? Why would you love a nose?

Physical characteristic? My nose … which always seemed to have greater meaning for bystanders than as a breathing device. Also, it’s the only feature that hasn’t gotten fat. People always paid a puzzling amount of attention to my nose.

Apparently, I am short. I never noticed it from down here, but people tell me they expected me to be taller. So I love repeating an anecdote about Helen Hayes being told that it was all very well for her to play Queen Victoria, who was short, but how could she play Mary, Queen of Scots, who was tall? "I am an actress," she is said to have replied. "I will act tall."

No, none. Can’t imagine such a thing.

My pointy little toe. I was adopted and so was always self-conscious about not looking like my relatives. When I had my son and saw that same pointy little toe, the sun shone.

That nose. Merely imperious today, it was a curse in my teens and 20s. But I thought that if I had a nose job, I wouldn’t live the life that I was supposed to. Go figure.

Ever since I was a little girl, people made a big fuss over my "big brown eyes." I remember going to a drugstore with my grandmother and the man behind the counter gave me a piece of candy because I had such "big brown eyes." I never thought they were such a big deal. Everyone in my family had them … both on the Italian and the Lebanese side.

I don’t think anything physical about me is special – good or bad. In recent years there has been such a change in what we perceive as a beautiful woman or handsome man — we are all so mixed up now, like a salad or a good stew, and we continue to produce more and more mixtures making us more and more unique. That has canceled out the old fashioned Barbie-doll standard. I read that a fashion magazine has shot an issue with only black women, I think they call it their black issue — I have never seen more beautiful women in my life! And the photographs I saw suggest the sophisticated look of the stars of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Exciting as it is, there is something bordering on old fashioned about a black issue. Our most prominent black citizen running for president is, to my eyes, an obvious mixture. Evolution may produce a race where every human is unique looking. Big sturdy noses, teeny slanted eyes, pointy droopy puppy ears, long fat chins — those features that set us apart from everybody else may be something we will like the best about ourselves.

A scar around my eye from an accident that happened when I was 22. It still bothers me some. It wrinkles when I laugh and makes me quite un-photogenic especially when I smile. I will never learn to love it. But I have accepted it. A scar on one’s face can make one somewhat scarcissistic.

I have one green eye and one blue and after cataract surgery I have almost 20/20 vision. So what’s not to like and be very thankful for?

 

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