This morning I was getting dressed for my Zumba class stressing about my hair getting in the way heavy with sweat.  My daughter Amelia offered to tie it back with a bandanna and when doing so, pulled my hair.

“Ouch”, I said.

“Beauty Hurts”,  she said and I began to think.

I was in Manhattan this past week visiting clients with two male colleagues.  These two gentlemen are professional in every sense of the word.  The dress professionally and carry themselves that way as well.  We were leaving the train in Grand Central when the two (European) women that were sitting next to me passed us on the ramp up into the concourse. I would like to say they were wearing sundresses and sandals but it was more like a half-dress and hoochie mama shoes.  They carried that look off quite well and at about age 22, they should have.  Not so much for the other 1000 women who tried that look in the sweltering 97 degree heat pushing themselves into little amounts of clothing and larger amounts of high heels.

Beauty hurts when you wear shoes that are too tight and too high to walk in.
Beauty hurts when you need industrial strength undergarments to hold it together, and
Beauty hurts when you try and become who and what you are not.

In Italy, women are beautiful inside and out. The men there treat them with such care that to witness it was almost voyeuristic.  They are often very full figured and comfortable with that body image. They can eat a canoli after a 5 course meal with the sensuousness of a honeymoon night. They don’t ‘work out’ and they don’t diet.  They just live….. I need to move there, preferably soon while most of my parts are still in the upright position and I am not in need of industrial strength undergarments.

As a sidebar, many do not have the personal grooming standards we women adhere to in the United States. I witnessed it on a very hot summer day in Rome.  My husband and I were waiting in line to select a flavor of gelato when this movie-star like woman walks in and briefly stops in front of  the fan.  The temps that day were over 90 and the Italians do not air condition like we do.  She was in the center of the breeze and slowly raised her arms.  What came after that, was the image of a NYC bicycle messenger in July…hot, not aromatically pleasing and in need of some personal grooming.  We made our selection and hi-tailed it out of there.

Beauty hurts; waxing and threading is sufferable; dieting just kills and Spinning class with Joanne is the test of all endurance and self control. (Ladies, that morning, I believe you did see Jesus in the floor lighting) Thank God for my friends, and I do thank God for them every day.

I am off to fry some soft shell crab for my husband and grill three spectacular diver scallops on the grill. It isn’t Rome but I’ll take it, hurt beauty and all.