Good and Looking

PhD Coachy has been challenging me lately with the idea of applying the following adjective to myself: “good looking.”

I don’t think it applies to me. I suppose I think of “good looking” as a slim, tall, toned woman sitting on a bar stool with smokey eyes and lips not formed into a smile or a frown, but a slight hint of openness. I’m thinking of the models/dancers in the video for Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible.”* (That’s right, rock your shoulders and hips, wait, oh my god, I just realized where my dance style comes from. How mortifying! Well, sort of, if you crossed that style with the dancing in Salt N Pepa’s Let’S Talk About Sex and Shoop. Can you tell I graduated from high school in 1986?)

While I don’t doubt that I am “huggable and kissable,” and on a basic level, may meet Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary definition of “having a pleasing or attractive appearance” — I don’t identify with how that adjective is commonly used. But, at dance on Thursday night, I found myself reflecting on the words themselves, “good” and “looking” and how they come together.

Dance was kind of intense Thursday. The instructor was leading us to explore the concept of openness and closedness, and I found myself observing that both happen at the same time. That is, if I were to close or tighten around my belly, my lower back and hips opened. Opening up in my chest meant tightening in my back and shoulders. For every contraction, an expansion. Having an awareness of that on a visceral level was so helpful. I found myself gravitating towards an openness in the front, in my chest. And I was acutely aware of the beauty of the people around me. I was particularly aware of this one guy, who I think I’ve seen dancing just once before. He’s a large guy, tall and big, and he moved with a fluidity and strength that was really compelling. There were more guys than usual at dance, and all of them were at least somewhat tall, and, in their own ways, powerful dancers, but none of them moved like he did. Plus, he looked like a sweetheart, with a baby face. I had this intense desire to tell him how beautiful he was**. At one point, we bumped into each other, and both said sorry, but I wasn’t at all sorry that we bumped into each other.

I mention this guy because one of the thoughts I had about “good looking” was that it could be interpreted as someone who looks like a good person. Now, there are all sorts of messy associations and assumptions tied up there, but on the surface, there is a way that people can look “good.” They can look open, interested, compassionate. They can dress in a way that has flair, style, but not discomfort or fussiness. I would say that in this regard, I do look “good” — looks may be deceiving, as many friends will tell you I’m not actually as sweet as I look. But if someone is drawn to people who look like they would be friendly, nice, approachable, I probably fit that bill. My eyes and irrepressible smile are partly to blame.

In fact, if you were to ask Mr. Rounded about the first time we met, he would say that he thought I looked like a good person. I have to admit that’s not the sexiest thing in the world to hear, not “you look gooooooooood, baby” but “you look like the kind of person who finds baby birds who have fallen out of the nest, puts them in a shoebox and tries to nurse them back to health, so let’s have sex now.” But maybe he did find it sexy, because in my American-Jewish neurotic openness and liberal optimism and a lack of pretense and artifice (no makeup, wearing fairly worn-out clothes, and a built-in softness and round, child-like face framed by short black curly hair — I was 22 years old at the time and had yet to smoke my first cigarette) — I was sort of sexy.

Sure, a person can look nice but be a jerkface. A person can certainly look mean and be filled with pure marshmallow fluff. But there is something to the way a person looks that is reflective of how they are, and it’s not a one-to-one match.

The other part of the equation is the “looking” part. Looking as in seeing, observing, taking in, watching. And I think I am good at that. A listening with the eyes to non-verbal cues. I’m probably better at it than I think. In part, it’s my training, as  Women’s Studies (now Feminist Studies at my alma mater***) taught me to look for what’s missing as much as what’s there. While dancing, I flashed on the contrast between the mind’s eye and the “eyes’ mind” and tried to let what I was seeing go straight to my left brain without commentary. To allow my eyes to see uncritically but deeply, openly, creatively. That’s another way of looking. I like the idea of using different ways of seeing in different settings — having my most critical, scrutinizing set of eyes when I’m surrounded by adversaries (rare, but it happens) and a more gentle focus that’s about feeling and connecting when I’m surrounded by a community of free dancers.

To some people, I might not look like I’m “good.” They may see me and think (falsely) that I’m consuming more than my fair share of resources because I’m fat (as they zoom past my 2001 Toyota Echo in their 2008 SUV) or that I’m lazy (what could be more lazy than relying on stereotypes rather than evaluating each person for their merits once you get to know them?) or ugly (what is uglier than injustice?) — to them, what I look like is “bad.” In that sense, I’m not good looking. And, I have my share of snap judgements (yesterday, I saw someone in a pharmacy who I thought looked like a pharma rep, who turned out to be the pharmacist, and I’m sure an expression of ugly judgement passed across my face for a second or so). I hate people who hate. Yet again, through dance, I was forced to accept that all I can control is what I put out there, not what other people do with it, how they receive it, or how they respond to it. All I can do is decide how I want to be, and move forward. I believe I am good (as in someone who has both good and bad within, and struggles to do good), I know how to “look good” in the sense of viewing others in an open, compassionate, learn-before-judging way. So, combining those things, I am, in a sense, good looking. But not in the sense most people mean.

* One of my bestest friends showed up to the 80s party my college roommates and I held in late 1989 dressed as “Robert Palmer Girl.” I don’t exactly remember, but I think I was a “preppy” with a plaid skirt, polo shirt and solid blazer. Other hits that night were someone in “Flashdance”-wear and a Robert Smith impersonator. That was a great party.

** I couldn’t figure out how to tell him I thought he was beautiful in a way that didn’t sounds like a come-on, so I chickened out. Maybe next time. I did tell him at the end of the night, when he apologized for bumping into me, that I didn’t mind at all.

*** Maybe I should pursue a PhD in History of Cosciousness. Because it would be sooooo practical, and lucrative.