Beauty

Spring is in the air - the birds bring an early morning cacophany; the plants that survived the big freeze of the winter are sprouting tender leaves; the scent of love and promise and newness lingers in the air at twilight.

Magazines and stores are replete with formalwear, sparkly and revealing and glorious.  The advertisements promise just the right products to achieve that dewy, youthful beauty which is proclaimed to be our greatest goal.

With the blossoming of the season, Herself is once more acutely aware that she is a plain, practically invisible, middle-aged woman.  With her jeans and her sneakers and ponytail, she is acutely unbeautiful. Yet if she makes a greater effort with her appearance than she usually does, is it obvious that she is aiming for a standard that she clearly cannot reach?  Mutton dressed as lamb, to turn a phrase? It pains her more than she can say. 

How vain, she accuses herself, to want reassurance that she has some kind of physical attractiveness.  She is once more angry at herself for being so insecure.  It should not matter.  Yet, it does.  How can she escape this unhappy mental space?