When it came to not fitting into assigned beauty standards, the Avon Lady never had those problems in her life it seemed. To be sure, she was short – a fact which I picked up from comments here and there among my relatives was tantamount to being a personal disaster topped only by the utter devastation and shame of being too fat (and that meant anything above one pound over ideal weight (not normal, ideal) – but she more than made up for that in her manner and ways. She loved showcasing the products she was selling on herself: scents, makeup, jewelry (though evil tongues – none of which are of course present nor were they involved in writing this piece – would be quick to point out that those items only ever touched her body or her hands when she was visiting prospective and regular clients). When she talked a mile a minute, her perfectly formed eyelashes fluttered along with every word, punctuating pleasure, distaste and disgust all in the same breath. She was rather pretty, objectively speaking. Her dark eyes, set in a quasi golden ratio, were framed by a crown of curly hair she painstakingly straightened every morning, an act which no doubt caused her to get up even earlier than she normally would have. She visibly took such care of herself that her darker hair and complexion didn’t really register. If anything, they would be seen as something that added a little spark to her personality.

So many people praised Polish women for getting up early, and then neglected to add that if they didn’t walk out of the house perfectly coiffed and made up, not only would people gossip behind these women’s backs, they would also make comments to their faces. And that’s before these women got fired. I know it’s the same in too many places. But I’m presently busting up the myth I was fed by my mother, that Poland had always been a matriarchal society where women ruled and the men did as they were told. Narcissists will frequently tell you the opposite of what’s really going on, whether that’s due to wilful deceit or just misplaced desire is still something I’m figuring out. 

In fact, Avon Lady had many of my mother’s traits, though she was much younger. She styled herself to appear in her very late twenties, but really she was pushing fifty. Not that there’s anything wrong with being open to style when you’re in your forties, but another thing I was hearing more and more in Poland – and seeing on the daily – was that after a certain age you just did not wear bright colors or even makeup anymore (not to mention anything that could be seen as revealing after the age of fifty), because “it’s not seemly.” The Avon Lady didn’t so much embrace her age as she tried to gloss over it with any and all products she could get her hands on. Fighting the inevitable one fresh new wrinkle at a time. And despite presenting herself as daring and different from her peers, the brightest color on her came from her tan. Everything else was a variation of shades of black on black with more black. Her (perceived) youth was her calling card and what kept her alive in society, because it helped her cement her place by showing that despite her divorce and teenage child, she was still able to snag and keep that other most desired commodity – the reason a perfect figure and beauty was needed in the first place – a man by her side, if not for real then at least for the optics. 

Her looks were one thing, but the added extra in keeping a man by her side (at least for the past two years) was her claim to fame. As she was quick to tell anyone willing to listen (and many who didn’t but had no choice, for she could talk so fast as to not let you get in a word edgewise, until she got what she wanted and then decided the conversation was over and she could be on her merry way), her nickname was Hollywood courtesy of having appeared as an extra on badly scripted pseudo reality shows that had done away with the concept of mirroring any sort of reality before their pilot was even aired. It was a fact she was very proud of, and not something she was ever shy about mentioning, especially around the boyfriend, who’d accepted her son but didn’t really have that much time for his two daughters, now that he was shacked up. Though they did make an occasional appearance at his new home, most likely to provide their own mother with a much needed break. 

Like all Polish men who considered themselves to be God’s Gift To Women, he was well aware of his worth. Namely that without him she would be nothing in society. A knowledge which warranted that she jumped as high as he wanted whenever he asked her to and catered to his every whim by anticipating each one well in advance, eyelashes (painstakingly constructed by her beautician / stylist who only used Avon articles when she needed Christmas or name day presents to give away) aflutter as the whiffs of the perfume he’d given her on several milestone occasions enveloped anyone in the room, whispering promises of the lingerie he had also given her on those very same occasions.

His attention to her was only interrupted by pledging his support to the national soccer team meant to bring the capital – and therefore all of Poland – to unforeseen glory. A support punctured by expletives against everyone who didn’t have the great fortune of being born Polish, an oversight God surely never meant to correct as that honor only fell upon a very few chosen few. As much as the honor of being touched by him when he wasn’t fiddling his girlfriend. This of course was reserved for random women much younger than her who came to her apartment when there was a birthday party or Avon event or when she decided on a whim that her son needed tutoring, another arrangement in which she called the shots, paying 1/4 of the average rate and canceling on a whim a few minutes before class without compensation only to malign those who canceled on her because they could find more reliable students elsewhere.

The moves he made were always subtle so that nothing could be proven, but enough to evoke discomfort alongside the knowledge that if anything were to be said she – the woman assaulted – would be at fault, not the boyfriend, and the Avon Lady’s wrath would rain down upon her like a thousand biblical plagues. But then Jews and foreigners were at the cause of that because they were the ones with the lawyers who made you sue in order to break up a good Polish family only so the evil Jews inciting the woman to such action could get rich. Just don’t ask her how she and the boyfriend really met, or when either of them got divorced in relation to what they would have called “the most joyous event in our lives” if either of them were less practically and more romantically inclined.