Beautiful Women...

There is this new woman that comes to my gym.  And she is just amazingly beautiful.  Like other species than me kind of beautiful.  And she has a killer body.  She wears this unitard kind of thing, that only women like her can manage without looking like a skinny version of some washed up WWF wrestler.

She is just naturally beautiful.  No filler, lips, fake, anything.  She is just one of those women who walk the earth, without augmentation that is what the rest of us are trying quite desperately to achieve...but never will.  It just isn’t our lot.

We all are attractive and beautiful in our own ways.  And regardless of how much I seem to care about the way I appear outwardly, I really struggle more over the status and appearance of my inward nature and beauty.  I have met plenty of women (and men) in this world that are absolutely stunning outside, and wretched inside.  For me, if there is not a match interiorly and exteriorly, the beauty fades almost instantaneously. Rendering the outward beauty immaterial and unimportant.

But this woman appears (I haven’t talked to her) to have it all.  And it also helps that she is probably barely 30.

I do not envy her because I am clear that she and I are different.  And I have been working very hard to not allow my mental health to devolve into feeling troll like when in the same room with her.  I don’t wish her any malice or bad feelings, but I would be a liar if I didn’t own that her just being her makes me feel inadequate...I mean less so than when I was younger, then I felt completely cowed in comparison.

For me, today, there is no comparison.  This woman is like some sort of other species...my trainer and I marvel at her.  We really can’t stop looking at her, which is rude but both of us are just kind of in awe of her.  And I won’t even go into what the men do...let’s just say none of them are paying attention to their workouts when she is there.  Well, I guess that goes for the women too.  She is just that stunning, that she kind of takes your breath away.

And I think she knows it but she holds it well.  She isn’t haughty or bitchy, but just kind of keeps to herself, working with her trainer and minding her own business.  I mean, she can’t not notice all of us staring at her.  It is literally the entire gym.

And while there is a part of me that wishes I could command an entire gym with my beauty, body and grace.  But there is a larger part of me that is grateful I can’t.  There is a lot of pressure with that kind of beauty.  A lot of people want things from you, judging you, hating you for no reason other than you are just beautiful.  Seems so unfair to hate someone because they just happen to be gifted, she had nothing to do with her looks, and while takes care of her body, I am pretty sure she is just improving a bit on what God already gave her.

What she has given me to work on is the innate inadequacy I feel when she is present.  She just walks in and I immediately feel like a troll. It is nothing she does, or says.  It is just the inevitable comparison I do in my head between her and I.  And I really am not trying to do it, it just happens.

So ever since her recent arrival at the gym, I have been working on what she brings up inside me.  This disassociation from who and what I am, this innate insecurity and feelings of being less than.  I am not less than because she exists.  She is not better than me.  We are both human beings, doing our best to live our lives and take care of this human vessel.  So why do I immediately and without intent, compare myself to her and come up so very short?  I am sure no one else at the gym is comparing us.  So why the fuck am I?

I think it is because in my head, somewhere way the fuck back in my history, I thought, believed or wished that attaining that kind of beauty was possible for me.  And my failure to attain it serves as some sort of indictment against me.  Some sort of thing I decided I wanted to be and failed to achieve.

To be clear, I was never going to attain her beauty.  It just isn’t in the cards for me, for most of us.  She is this other species of woman that the rest of us marvel at and either envy or worship.  She is the kind of woman, men worship.  And while I would love to say that I have never wanted to be worshipped, that would be a lie.

But I do know a few things about being envied.  And I do know how attractiveness can be a barrier to friendship.  Women are not always kind to women who threaten them.  And while I do not see this woman as a threat, I will admit that her beauty is off putting in that I don’t feel like I can talk to her in a way that isn’t going to be weird, awkward or dumb. Her kind of beauty tends to be a catalyst for stupidity or meanness.  I would fall into the stupid camp...many women would just be mean.

I feel like she has entered my realm because there is work for me to do on my own self esteem issues, on my body image, on my aging and beauty.  Why do I feel the need to compare myself to her and come up so very short?  I mean, really, troll like?  That seems overly harsh.  I know no troll like people except in fairytales, so why the fuck do I go there?

I guess she makes me feel like I want to be a better version of myself, not so that men like me better and worship me, not so other women like me better, in my experience, beauty and attractiveness is a not the best thing to have if you want a host of female friends.  The competition between women is fucking awful.  And I just can’t do it.  The women who are my friends today, don’t engage in the compare and despair (99% of the time - we are human after all).  My very few female friends love each other, celebrate our own unique bodies and beauty.  I do not ever feel the way this woman makes me feel about my friends.  But I am awestruck by my close girlfriend’s beauty, grace and being on the regular.  This is why I have them as friends.  They inspire me.

So I am going to continue to do my work that this other woman in the red unitard engenders in me.  To sort through my insecurities and vanity.  To not compare and despair, but perhaps honor and appreciate the innate beauty God gives us in this world. And the female form is quite fetching after all.  Instead of a threat to me as a woman, I am going to view her as some idea of perfection and do my best to emulate it.  I am going to say hi to her and let her know that at least one woman at the gym doesn’t instantly hate her.  I am going to be the woman that I am, and I am likely going to do that awkwardly.  And that is ok.  I think the most important thing I can take away from all of this is that beauty should never be the breeding ground for resentment, hatred and envy.  Beauty should always inspire greatness...and so I am going to work towards being a better me, inside and out.

Again, still...