Skin tight and skin deep

Years ago, a friend once asked me whether I'd like to come back to the world incredibly beautiful, but dumb as a doorknob, or genius-level smart, but hideously ugly. The choice was - and still is - easy.

Dumb and beautiful, of course!

I mean, if I were that beautiful and that dumb, I'd be too stupid to know anything other than everyone wanted to take care of things for me because of my beauty, right? I'd be helped with everything and desired by everyone. I'd be given loads of gifts, taken to heaps of dinners and dances, and have lots of friends. (And if they were false friends, I wouldn't know because I'd be too stupid to understand that!) All my life, I would only know that people always want to do things for me.

Sounds all right to me.

I thought of this recently when - twice in a week - I was accused of not being a sexual person with my choice of clothes. And the accusation may even have gone deeper than that, extending to me not being a sexual person with the physical being I put out in the world - hair style, makeup (or in my case, lack thereof), demeanor, etc.

While I'm not sure my accusers are so wrong, I'm also not sure that it's so wrong to keep that part of me private either. I mean, how does one reconcile looking sexy and attractive to the outside world with either not caring about it for fear of rejection, or being too afraid to look that way for fear of attention? (This is why I continue to pay my therapist good money - money that I earn because I'm not beautiful enough to just be given it.)

Overall, despite the attention of SATC, Gossip Girls and now 90210, I'm not sure that wearing tighter or more revealing clothes really helps a woman feel sexy or attractive. I think it's more to do with a woman's acceptance of herself that makes her feel that way. (And I think the same is true for guys, despite the old adage, 'the clothes make the man'.) So while a Hermes scarf tied around a woman's mane of billowing hair might look incredibly attractive, I don't think that it gives her the self-esteem needed to feel sexy wearing it.