It’s hard to describe someone whose main essence is outer beauty and status. Though to be fair, that has been my experience with Polish women in general. I’m not saying they’re all like that, just that this has been my experience. Whether that has anything to do with my mother herself being a narcissist or not is open to interpretation (though I’m most definitely coming down on the side of yes). In my experience, beauty – more often than not – is a currency in Poland and as a child I was either not fully aware of this or else chose to wilfully ignore it. Seeing as how I deliberately didn’t learn to cook, clean as thoroughly as a Polish housewife would and sew / mend garments just so I wouldn’t be valued solely for this, I’d hazard a guess that it was a case of ignoring something in the hope that I could avoid it. At the very least it guaranteed that I wouldn’t attract the attention of those wanting a maid in the hallway, a lady in the parlor, a cook / chef in the kitchen and a (luxury) whore in the bedroom. 

But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel inadequate when presented with that type. We’re all drawn to beauty, even if we see it in different places and within different styles. I am currently collaborating with a licensed cosmetologist who doubles as makeup artist stylist, who keeps telling me that everyone is beautiful and means it from the bottom of her heart. For myself beauty is in colors and in the ways we choose to express ourselves. But as a child, that wasn’t how it went down. Beauty was pointed out to me by my relatives when watching TV shows, movies and even just walking down the street. Every photo album was carefully scrutinized for the beauties and the beasts (the beasts, though, were never given a chance at redemption, as though there was a tacit understanding that this had been God’s will and as such must not be tempered with, though maybe the mother had committed a grave sin such as staring into the fire while pregnant, which resulted in their baby having a red beauty mark on their face). And if I didn’t believe it, I saw it lived everyday when I was anywhere with my mother, either of her two sisters (on the rare occasions they all did hang out together or were forced into an interaction), any of my mother’s cousins or her brother and his wife (and when she was still alive also my uncle’s mother-in-law. 

Beauty had a standard and it was tall, svelte and ideally blue-eyed blonde though if you were a brunette and had exceptional features such as a great figure or charm (that much coveted attribute they were all raving about but never wanted to share knowledge of) you could be redeemed by that. A good figure – like a coveted passport – gave you access to all areas and was to be desired before all else. I learned more about how to  be a good person from watching shows like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, PBS and later on various sitcoms and shows than from anything that was said in my own house. No one explained beauty to me, it was just something I needed to work out on my own. But one thing I quickly realized was that what passed as beauty around me was far removed from what passed for beauty if my mother or any of the Polish relatives had their way. 

As I came to understand it, beauty in Poland was both a currency and a commodity, and that belief was reinforced pretty much on the daily, in subtle and more hidden ways. It was easier to deal with coming from the Polish women and girls outside the confines of home, because they could be waved away with the excuse that this is just how they were – and as I learned the older I got – not everyone had to be your friend, no matter how seemingly glamorous they were or appeared to be. 

But in the confines of your home where the message doesn’t necessarily have to be spelled out in order to be reinforced, it was a whole other story. Being short was one thing – I never minded that, all the cool girls I knew were short – but not being taken for an eye exam when I’d been told at the age of nine that in a year or two I’d need glasses was a whole other issue. In the end I decided to have myself checked when I read a book at the age of fifteen in which a character – like me – had constant headaches and couldn’t see too well, got sent to have her eyes checked and presto headaches and blurry vision gone in the book as well as in my life.